20 Things You Never Knew About Cuddy
by emma4713
Summary: Written for cuddy fest. Prompt 65. Cuddy gen? any pairing is welcome if desired - Twenty things you never knew about Cuddy. House/Cuddy, Wilson/Cuddy


**Title:** 20 Things You Never Knew About Cuddy  
**Fandom/Pairing:** House, gen., House/Cuddy, Wilson/Cuddy  
**Spoilers:** None.  
**Rating:** R  
**Disclaimer:** The characters are not mine. The words are.  
**A/N:** Written for **cuddy_fest**. Prompt 65. Cuddy gen? (any pairing is welcome if desired) - Twenty things you never knew about Cuddy. Songs are Disney and The National.

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20.) It's not House she hires because "one night he gave her everything she wanted."

Princeton General had just forced James Wilson to resign due to inter-hospital relationships. His wife left him for it. He was distraught and Lisa Cuddy was always good at picking up the pieces. She got him some alcohol and some ice cream and showed him some cleavage. It was that last thing that got her in trouble.

Through three and a half bottles of wine, his shirt was off and hers was half-unbuttoned before they fell apart, giggles quiet and eyes heavy.

She woke first, untangled herself and snuck away. Three days later, she hired him, tugging gently on her pearl necklace.

19.) She loves Disney movies, adores them, can't get enough of them. Only the originals, of course—no _Lion King 1½_ for her.

_Beauty and the Beast_ is her favorite. Sometimes she watches it and thinks of House and her saving him. She's not sure if that makes Wilson Lumiere or Mrs. Potts, which makes her laugh. She knows every word to Belle.

_Here's where she meets Prince Charming, but she won't discover that it's him 'til chapter three_.

She knows most of the words to most of the songs. She has a playlist on her iPod: Disney. It's all her favorite, and she works out to it occasionally. There's nothing like running to I'll Make a Man Out of You.

_This guy's got me scared to death. I hope he doesn't see right through me._

She still gets scared when she watches Be Prepared in _The Lion King_. The hyenas goosestepping coupled with Scar's ferocity have her hugging her knees every time. Poor Unfortunate Souls tends to do the same thing.

She's gone frame-by-frame through all the myths, seen "sex" written in the air and seen the priest get an erection at the wedding. She goes back and forth between which hero she'd want to be with (Aladdin's too whiny most of the time, but every once in a while she's up for adventure) and she's always disappointed that the Beast turns out to be so not cute.

She likes to blame Disney for her unrealistic expectations of romance, but deep down, she still believes in happily ever after.

_There might be something there that wasn't there before._

18.) She bought that tennis outfit so guys would react like House.

She's always loved tennis, adored it, played since she was a kid. And it's a great way to keep in shape.

But it's an even better way to show off her legs.

Tennis and high heels have kept them toned; her Jewish heritage gives them the slightest tan even in the winter. She's never really liked the idea of the gym as a place to pick people up, but she's not going to miss a chance just because she's doesn't like the idea of it.

So she buys skimpy tennis outfits and schedules her games at times she knows all the single, successful men are off work. She's picked up Jeremy, Rich and Brendan since she got the outfit. Maybe they're not the long-term type, but they were fun while they lasted, and sometimes that's all she needs.

17.) She's a cat person. She loves cats.

Growing up she had a deaf cat named Clyde. She used to turn her stereo up as loud as it could go, and he would sit next to the speaker, snapping his head as though he were watching the sound waves go by.

She volunteered in the Humane Society until she decided she wanted to be a doctor and started candy striping. She wanted to adopt every cat that came in. Her mother only let her have two at a time.

In college and med school she had a cat named Roger. He was her only reliable male companion. He died the year after she became Dean of Medicine. She never got another one.

She couldn't really. She knew she couldn't. Because, at that point, she knew she couldn't just get one. Lisa Cuddy would never get a cat from anywhere other than the Humane Society, and she knew then what she knows now, what she knew when she was ten—if she went in there to pick one out, she'd leave with all of them.

She can't be the old crazy lady with all the cats. She can't be the lady found weeks after she's died, half-eaten by her cats. She's lonely, yes, but one cat, two cats, it wouldn't cure her loneliness. How many cats it would take she can only guess, and that's something she's not willing to think about. She can't reaffirm her loneliness by needing seven cats to get by.

Instead she has her red wine and a bathtub for companionship.

16.) Every once in a while, during thunderstorms or blizzards, and sometimes on hot, muggy nights, she dials *67 and calls House. She hangs up when he picks up, and he never knows it's her. Sometimes she lets him curse at her for a little while before putting the receiver back down. She's not sure why he keeps picking up.

"Why do you only call me when it's storming out?" he picks up one night. "You afraid?"

She nods and wonders if he can hear it over the line.

"This better not be Wilson."

That almost makes her laugh, but she catches herself. He'd know it was her. He knows her better than anyone, even if he tries to hide it. She's surprised he doesn't know it's her by her breathing.

She has tennis partners and hospital acquaintances, but he and Wilson are the closest things she has to friends. The hospital takes up most of her time, so she doesn't do very well keeping up relationships. But when she has the time, she misses real human contact. So she calls him.

"Listen to this," he answers the next month.

He holds the phone to a speaker for a couple of minutes. Quiet music and a unique gentle male voice serenade her.

_We expected something, something better than before. We expected something more._

"I didn't know I could be impressed with new music," he says when the song ends.

She wants to tell him that it was good, that she liked it. She wants to tell him that she likes it when he talks to her, even though he doesn't know who it is, doesn't know if anyone is even listening. But she knows the moment she speaks the spell will break.

After a year, the one-sided conversations lengthen. It's three a.m. and she's supposed to go to the hospital tomorrow, but she can't bring herself to hang up on him. He's talking about the presidential election, and who would have guessed he's just as liberal as she is?

"You know," he says around four, "you're lucky I don't have any other friends. I'd yell at you for jacking up my phone bill."

Her heart races and she doesn't breathe for a moment. He's speaking with that certainty he has, and she's suddenly afraid he knows it's her and is going to call her on it. She suddenly hopes he knows it's her. He called her his friend.

"I'm going to sleep now," he says.

He still sounds certain and she really thinks he knows it's her. She can practically see him smirk as he hangs up.

She's not sure. Maybe she doesn't know. Maybe it's almost four and her mind's playing tricks on her. In the end, she doesn't really care.

She's a little lost when it comes to him. She's always been and expects she always will be. She's pretty sure his hatred of her is an act, but sometimes it's real enough to hurt. Half the time she loves it when he comments on her breasts or her ass or her legs; she likes to be wanted.

Especially by someone like him. He can piss her off like no one else, but maybe that's all part of the draw.

In reality, most of the time she's quiet and scared behind her Dean of Medicine mask. She's busy and lonely and doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. She's not sure which sacrifices to take. She spends too much time at her hospital because it won't let her down the way men too often do.

He somehow seems to know all of this about her, and that's scarier than anything.

But the next time it storms, she calls again.

He clicks on the speakerphone and plays her a song on his piano.

15.) Sometimes she goes commando even when underwear lines are not an issue. It's generally when her hormones are making her want to jump most anything that moves. Instead, she goes commando and has eyesex with that cute guy who gets her coffee, and the intern on the fifth floor, and the one on the first, and the parking lot attendant, and….

14.) She hated her body in high school. Once one of her friends said "I love my small ass and chest. At least I know boys aren't after me just for my body."

Janice was being particular catty that day. Lisa didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't necessarily her brains or personality; some guys were just really into small girls.

But that didn't mean Lisa liked her body. Her boobs were too big and her ass was _huge_. Guys looked at her chest, constantly. She learned to wear plain shirts so they had no excuse. If she dropped something, she bent her knees before bending at the waist.

She ended up having sex with the first guy who talked to her for thirty minutes without once glancing at her chest. He really wasn't that smart, but at least he was nice.

When all was said and done, she was glad for her body. It made her work four times as hard so her professors would look past her chest and ass and realize this girl's actually got a brain. So she worked and worked and worked. Without hating her body, she never would have made it where she is now.

(And, okay, sometimes it's kind of nice to be stared at when you're pushing forty.)

13.) She thinks Chase is cute.

She would _never_ admit this. Never. Not to anyone. Not when she was drunk. Never.

But she, like well, any girl, has a thing for accents. The way he says schedule almost makes her giggle.

Sometimes she thinks House knows, because when she's really mad at him—when he's been up to his usual antics and almost kills the patient before saving him—House sends Chase in to let her know they've scheduled him for surgery. Cuddy will smile and thank him. Chase always seems to think the smile is one of barely contained rage at House. But it's of barely contained laughter that spurts from her as soon as he's out of earshot.

12.) She sleeps naked unless it's a night she thinks House might show up at her door or outside her window.

Sometimes she sleeps naked even then.

He's only shown up once when her pajamas were still tucked in the drawer. She wrapped a robe around herself and answered the door and he had stared hungrily. She tried to look at him and tried not to blush and failed at both, ending up red-faced and looking at the door handle.

But all she gets is that hungry stare and a comment about how nice the funbags look, even with nothing to hold them up. She blushes more and tries to be angry—but she's more upset that he hasn't kissed her yet. He pesters her about dates and wonders if anyone's inside. She assures him there isn't and her eyes are screaming _There could be!_ but he doesn't seem to notice.

It's one of the few times she stands firm when she says, "No" about a procedure. He does it anyway. She's more angry that he never actually made a move than the three-thousand dollar procedure he ordered.

11.) Her belief in God never wavers.

10.) Her favorite drink is a Pinky Friedman. One part orange juice, one part vodka, one part grapefruit juice. It's best with carbonated blood orange juice and Tito's vodka—more pure that way, using vodka from Texas.

She's completely fine with the fact that it's a girl drink. She's a girl. That's okay. She doesn't throw like a girl or serve like a girl or behave like a girl, but she's allowed to drink like a girl. In college the boys always made Eric drink beer, but she could get away with only vodka and tequila—"You're a girl. You're allowed to only drink the hard stuff."

She loves her Pinky Friedmans the way her Texas friends loved their Kinky Friedman. She didn't know much about him, didn't know much about Texas in general. One of her best friends from school was from Houston, and she introduced her to Pinky Friedmans and taught her to say y'all. She fell out of the later habit pretty quickly once they graduated, but always retained the former.

9.) She wanted to be a witch long before Harry Potter. She read Matilda dozens of times and dreamed of a school in a faraway place where she could learn to fly and cast spells. She would stare at things and think as hard as she could, begging them to move.

8.) She hates Cameron.

She really does. She tried not to. When House first hired her, Lisa smiled and complimented her and tried to like her. But the way Cameron looks at House, like he's everything in the world, while pretending he offends her, annoys the hell out of her. Her attempts at subtly while trying to figure out House's background are ridiculous, and they only get more ridiculous when she tries to figure out anything that has happened between House and Cuddy. Lisa and House have a history, yes, and that's none of Cameron's business.

She hates her when she bribes House to go on a date. I mean, _honestly_.

Lisa hated Stacy too. Not whole-heartedly—they had been friends before Stacy and House became Stacy and House. But after the leg, when she started treating him like he was fragile, when she started keeping things from him, when she started hurting him on top of that ripping pain through his thigh, Lisa hated her. She's afraid she might just hate any woman who has any sort of relationship with House.

But no, she's pretty sure she'd hate Cameron anyway. Hate her big eyes and her pouty lips and her satisfied smile because she thinks she's so beautiful and she's so smart and she's such a good doctor. Hate the way she can't talk to patients, can't deliver bad news.

What she hates most, what she really hates about Cameron, is that she's beautiful and she works hard, but not as hard as Lisa worked. Cameron could be anything, could go anywhere, but she only pretends to not want to be judged by her looks. In reality, she works hard enough to deserve her job and salary and accomplishments, but relies on her big eyes and her pouty lips to get what she really wants.

7.) Sometimes her leg aches.

Days when he's especially cranky, days when his limp is more pronounced than usual, days when he fights her with actual insults instead of compliments veiled in sarcasm. Days when she knows he hurts, more than usual, her leg aches.

After the ketamine treatment they have their months of glorious happiness. He shows up at her door too many times a week (could there every really be too many times?), and never comes in, just waits, hands on the back of his head, until she brings him a glass of water. She quickly learns to bring the entire jug she keeps cold in her fridge; he drinks like a camel after a caravan trip.

After his water, once he's caught his breath, he grins at her—the big, sly, toothy grins he used to give her at U of M—and he takes off again, into the heat of a summer in New Jersey. Two weeks into this routine, and she opens her door in full running gear.

"Comin' with?" he gives her the grin in between glasses of water.

"You always told me I should run with a partner, told me I was too little to protect myself."

"You never listen to me," he calls as she takes off ahead of him.

"Oh, House, when will you learn I _always_ listen to you?"

"Nuh-uh!" he says like a child as he catches up. "I've been telling you to show me your fun bags for years."

"Been there, done that," she laughs.

But then September comes and he shows up less and less. Then October comes and the limp is back. She confronts him before Halloween and can't blink or the tears will fall.

"Why are _you _crying?" he snaps. "It's not _your_ leg."

How can he possible think that, after all this time? It's hers too.

Her own ache comes back strong the week he starts using his cane again. No one says anything and Cameron continually looks like her mother has just died. House just snarls at everyone, more than usual, and Lisa's leg aches.

It aches all Thanksgiving, when she's with her family and he's alone on his couch—Wilson meeting the family of who could be the next Mrs. Wilson.

One day she wakes up in such pain the first thing she does is call him.

He grunts into the phone after the third ring.

"House? Are you okay?"

"Tripped," he mutters.

"I'm coming over."

Her pain left her as soon as she burst to action, ready to be his savior once more. She finds his Hide-a-Key easily (he always thought he was so much better than her) and finds him on the floor with hazy eyes.

Working together, they get him into a chair. She gets him Vicodin and water. He dry swallows them anyway. Her throat burns.

"How'd you know?" he asks.

"What?"

"How'd you know something was wrong?"

She looks at the floor and brushes her hand against her leg. "Gut feeling I guess."

6.) She goes to the aquarium when she's stressed. The cool blue water with fish gliding through always calms her. Of course, once the movie _Closer_ comes out, she always half-expects House to show up wearing a white coat (for once) and saying horrible inappropriate things to her.

But he never does, and she doesn't really care one way or the other.

She goes at night, or in the middle of the afternoon, whenever there _aren't_ children around. She loves children and desperately wants to be a mother, but not in the times when she's at the aquarium.

She goes when it's quiet, silent and dark and cool. It's better than yoga at clearing her mind and settling her down. She breathes in and wishes she too could lose herself in the water.

5.) She's an amazing stone skipper. Best her father ever met, he'd always say.

He'd take her stone-skipping every Sunday—it was his version of church for his little girl who was growing up Jewish. He told her stories she didn't realize were from the Bible until high school. She'd skip stones and he'd tell her about a lost sheep or a mustard seed. She loved when her father told her stories. He'd finish his story and give her a crooked, toothless smile and she would skip stones for him.

Even now, if she goes home to visit for a weekend, they meet in the kitchen by eight Sunday morning, never planning it. He doesn't tell her stories anymore, but he still gives her that smile and she still skips stones.

When he's diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she goes back to visit near the end. He calls her his sister's name. But he's in the kitchen when she peeks in that morning. He smiles at her and calls her Lisa, just once, and she leads him to their bridge over the river.

He just sits there, his feet dangling, and watches her. But he's still got that smile, so she keeps skipping stones.

4.) She's madly in love with Rafael Nadal. She never remembers this until Wimbledon. She thinks about it when she hears the French Open is on, when she hears he's won it for the millionth time in a row. But once Wimbledon comes, she TiVos every one of his matches and watches them with a TV dinner or a pint of ice cream before she goes to bed.

She loves his hair, loves the way it separates into sweaty ringlets on his neck quickly into the match. She loves the way he pulls off his sweatband and shakes his hair out after a match, wishes she could catch one of those sweaty wristbands he throws into the crowd when he's won. She loves his eyes—almost black under those dark eyebrows. They look angry and intense as he plays, but they light up in interviews after the matches. He'd smile and his eyes would gleam and she'd almost faint.

3.) She occasionally wants to show Wilson what a woman who isn't needy is like. She thinks about throwing him onto his bed and being on top. She thinks about reverse cowgirl and his hands tied above his head. She thinks about the scared look on his face that is betrayed by the gleam in his eyes.

They aren't as close as she and House, nor as convoluted. She's not sure if that would make it more of a problem or less. Sure, there would be no undertones and not much history (except that one time), but he's also the type to expect, you know, a relationship.

That's not what she wants when she considers it. She wants the power over him. She wants him to understand that needy isn't necessarily always the way to go after all, but she doesn't want him to want her instead. For that night, sure. But nothing more. She's not looking for a relationship when she considers it. It's generally on the days she goes commando for no reason. She's never been good with hormones.

2.) She doesn't want to use an anonymous donor.

She doesn't. She doesn't, she doesn't, she doesn't.

She tries to ask Wilson, but she doesn't want Wilson either.

It's too hard. It's too confusing and convoluted and one false step ruins the peace that's been building between them for a while.

But she's been dreaming about a mess of curls and bright blue eyes.

She asks him to help with the injections. Because she trusts him. Because it's one step closer. Because it gives her two times a day where he's actually serious and she has a chance, even if she never takes it. Because she thinks letting him touch her ass twice a day might soften him up a little, might get him to say yes.

But he can't say yes if she never asks, and she knows he's not the type who's going to bring it up. Every day he is there and they are silent as his thumb brushes her skin through the disinfectant wipe and she bites her lip as the needle slides in, but she never says anything. That's the way it is with them—silent and touching that always has something behind it, something that hurts a little even though you know it's right.

She still can't ask him.

1.) She's happy.

Maybe she doesn't have the kid with blue eyes. Maybe her dad can't remember her name. Maybe her leg hurts just as House's does.

But Rafael Nadal wins Wimbledon. The aquarium gets a new whale—and the otters are perpetually adorable. House still picks up his phone with jokes or songs or just his breath. A stray cat shows up on her door and how can she turn him away?

And when all else fails, she pulls out the Tito's vodka she keeps in the back of her cupboard and makes herself a drink.


End file.
